One of the efforts for the third generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) program is to bring new technology, new architecture and new methods into the new LTE settings and configurations. The LTE program is undertaken in order to provide improved spectral efficiency, reduced latency, and better utilization of radio resources, thereby providing faster user experiences and richer applications and services with less associated cost.
With regard to mobile terminal idle mode paging reception, the LTE system may use the downlink layer 1 (L1) and layer 2 (L2) control signaling channel to signal paging indicators to groups of wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs) with the same paging group identity. However, this may not be practical in the implementation of certain aspects of paging group handling with respect to idle mode paging fundamentals, (e.g., total system paging capacity, system paging load distribution, and flexibility in assigning WTRUs different discontinuous reception (DRX) cycle lengths within a single paging group of WTRUs).
It would therefore be beneficial to provide a method and apparatus for handling paging groups.